Top woman administrator resigns over union's media attacks
By MARC COOPER
L.A. WEEKLY/Tuesday, February 28, 2006 - 4:00 pm
After recent critical press reports alleging massive dysfunction inside the legendary United Farm Workers and its related agencies, the movement's top woman administrator has resigned, upset over the union's strategy to lash out at the media and other internal issues, the Weekly has learned.
Dissenting from the UFW network's current strategy, veteran activist Nora Benavides stepped down as executive director of LUPE, the nonprofit community organizing arm of the farm workers' movement. LUPE's president is Arturo Rodriguez, son-in-law of César Chávez and also current president of the United Farm Workers union. Paul Chávez, one of César Chávez's sons and the director of another UFW-linked agency, also sits on the LUPE board as do other UFW officials.
When contacted by the Weekly, Benavides, who took over LUPE operations two years ago, confirmed that she had resigned, but declined further comment. LUPE staff members said she resigned last Friday in a letter given to Paul Chávez. Farm worker movement spokespersons refused to comment on the matter.
Benavides was the only woman running one of the myriad agencies and charities linked together in what the UFW calls "the movement." Her small but scrappy organization was among the few bright spots in the farm worker movement that has been recently accused by reporting in the L.A. Times and the Weekly of having fallen into a long, unproductive slump of nepotism and institutionalized back-scratching. The articles in the Weekly and the Times reported that the heirs of César Chávez had used his legacy to build up an interlocking network of organizations that were successful in capturing millions of dollars in public and private funding but had neglected the work of organizing impoverished farm workers into unions.
Forty years after the dramatic emergence of the UFW, less than 2 percent of California farm workers are represented by the union founded by César Chávez. By contrast, LUPE has shown some measurable success in fulfilling its stated mission of organizing around community and social issues inside farm worker communities, especially since Benavides took the helm of the group.
MORE: http://www.laweekly.com/dissonance/12766/ufw-begins-to-crack/ -- Jim Devine / Bust Big Brother Bush! "America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between." -- Oscar Wilde.